Still wielding a chainsaw at 85: the Australians restoring nature in retirement — SkimNews
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- Susan Downes, a 76-year-old retired GP in Western Australia, has planted 45,000 native seedlings across 120 hectares of her York farm and placed the land under a conservation covenant; 45 plant species have reappeared naturally from the soil's seed bank.
- Landcare Australia's 2026 national survey found 80% of respondents were aged 55 or over, prompting chair Peter Garrett to call older Australians "the backbone" of the movement.
- The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data identifies roughly 290,000 Australians volunteering through environmental protection or animal welfare organisations.
- Lyn Sharp, 70, of the Gold Coast, now volunteers up to 15 hours a week monitoring sea slugs, turtles, platypus, water bugs and seagrass, and runs nocturnal cane toad hunts — despite bursitis in her hip and a troublesome shoulder.
- Ken Hooper, 85, and wife Jill, 82, have spent more than 20 years restoring 970 hectares at Moona-Bingel on the Edward River in NSW; they sold an earlier 180-hectare restoration property, Wirra-Lo, to the Wetland Revival Trust in 2023.
- Downes is working with Ballardong elders to find an Aboriginal name for Mount Mackie and is planning a 2030 reconciliation event marking 200 years since European arrival in the region; Ballardong women already hold cultural healing sessions on the hill several times a year.
- Downes concedes the succession question remains unresolved: with friends facing dementia diagnoses, she is pressing to have the property's future "set in stone," unsure whether her grandchildren or an outside body will take it on.
Why it matters: Conservation programs across Australia now depend overwhelmingly on a single demographic cohort whose members are grappling with their own mortality — Downes is racing to legally lock in her restoration and the Hoopers admit they "need another two lifetimes" to finish. If those volunteers age out faster than a successor cohort materializes, projects measured in the hundreds of hectares and tens of thousands of seedlings could revert without explicit handover plans.
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